Agência Brasil
Brasília – Photographic identification and fingerprinting, security procedures recently adopted at airports in Brazil and the United States, have now emerged from the sphere of ports and airports and become a diplomatic issue. On Tuesday night (6), the Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, requested the US Ambassador to Brazil, Donna Hrinak, that Brazilians be exempted from this kind of identification when they arrive in US territory, as is the case with citizens from 27 other countries.
Amorim pointed out that the Brazilian judicial decision to identify Americans, using the same technology as adopted in the US, was based on the criterion of reciprocity in international law. Which suggests that this security measure would probably be dropped in Brazil, if Brazilians were exempted from a similar practice at American immigration counters.
An official note from the Itamaraty says that, at the meeting with Hrinak, Amorim "emphasized that the chief concerns of the Brazilian government regarding this matter have to do with maintaining the high level of relations between Brazil and the United States and, most of all, with the need to assure adequate treatment for Brazilian nationals who enter that country."
